Eureka!

[Roogle]

And, like Tabris said, Ashe is an exceptionally well-written character! From the pre-release artwork all the way to the early FMVs, I was convinced that Ashe would be the timid and shy female who took almost a back-seat approach to the whole journey, like Yuna, or Aerith. But boy was I wrong! When we met "Amalia" I found out that Ashe could be a bossy bitch! And as the game progressed, she became almost unlikeable at some points! It's this sort of extremely realistic molding of an old archetype that really sets FFXII apart from the rest!

I agree with you. I think that it was unfortunate that we did not get to see the characters fleshed out more through their interactions with each other and the environment.

Ashe is a unique heroine in the series, but I think that the way the game is structured, she is not comparable to other heroines in the series whose events revolve around them. The party could have gotten by with Ashe being a helpless diplomat or a sword-wielding cavalier. Do you know what I mean?

[Renmiri]

Characters were a breath of fresh air to be sure... Just not my cup of tea. Innovating for the sake of being different didn't fly with me. I miss characters I could care about. Those were too bland to either hate or care.

[Bolivar]

And, seriously, someone's gotta invent a decent word recognition thing. That'd be truly magnificent. If you could type in any word and have it read nice and proper.....oh yeah.

Anyway, I disagree with the "there is no definite bad guy/good guy" thing. Vayne may not have been trying to literally destroy the world, and may have been facing off against the Occuria, who are none to righteous themselves, but that doesn't make him any less of a psychotic villain. And just because she's leading a war doesn't make Ashe any less of a hero.

Skyblade, you beat me to it and hit the nail on the head.

If you think the main idea conveyed in Ivalice-based Final Fantasy games is that "there is only a gray area", then you are a Yatsumi Matsuno character stuck inside one of his games. The central story in XII (and Tactics also) chronicled how the protagonists are able to rise above the moral ambiguity that engulfs their world, and resolve that the ends do not always justify the means. There's a reason why The Pharos was presented as the most important scene in the game - both Ashe and Vaan abandon their ties to a morally ambiguous world, they both forsake blind revenge.

I feel FFXII did have a great story that could make you care about the characters - it was just too little, and too late by the end of the game. The main story feels rather short, but more than anything the amount of content away from story or any character side-story vastly outweighs any attention they put to the characters, and its easy to forget what your current objective is or why you should care.

After 3 playthroughs I do like all the characters very much, especially Ashe for some of the above reasons, and others people pointed out. In nearly every FF beforehand, all the female leads are innocent and/or have a strong sense of justice, and are dependent on men. Ashe is selfish, impolite, her pride is her weakness and at the beginning of the game she is wholly consumed by her bloodthirsty quest for revenge. It's actually kinda hot. Anyways, at the end you get a sense of how much she has matured, and not just into adulthood. I think she had one of the better character archs of the series, and it's cool it happened to a chick; makes me less tense about FFXIII.